2. Essential information

You can search our catalogue for relevant records using keywords and dates. However, because the catalogue descriptions of these records are not very detailed it can be difficult to identify the right keywords to find the documents you want.

The printed current guide, available on site at Kew, can be used to identify useful keywords relating to this or other subjects. Ask for it at an enquiry desk.

The key administrative bodies involved in public health in the 19th and 20th centuries are listed below. Knowing the relevant government body for a particular period will help you to make more focused catalogue searches.

1805-1806 and 1831-1832 Board of Health

1834-1847 Poor Law Commission

1847-1871 Poor Law Board

1848-1858 General Board of Health

1871-1919 Local Government Board

1919-1968 Ministry of Health

Read the administrative background information in the catalogue descriptions of MH and MH Division 1 for useful information about the formation and responsibilities of these official bodies.

The description of MH Division 1 also lists some key record series. Browse this list to see if anything covers your area of interest. To see more clearly how events and legislation during the 19th century fit together, you may find it useful to look at the

6. Poor Law Commissioner’s surveys 1838-1842

The Poor Law Commission organised two surveys of the sanitary conditions of the poor in east London, one in 1838 and another in 1842.

The first survey was at the request of Edwin Chadwick, a Poor Law Commissioner, and was published in the annual report of the Poor Law Commissioners 1838 (Parliamentary paper number 147; 1837-8 vol xxvii)

The second survey was more extensive and was carried out by assistant commissioners with a report published under Chadwick’s name in 1842. Some key records relating to this survey are

registers of correspondence between Commission and inspectors in MH 33

William Day’s synopsis of reports on housing conditions in North Wales in MH 32/16

correspondence from assistant commissioners Day and Gilbert in MH 33/2

7. Health of Towns Commission 1843

As a result of the 1842 Poor Law Commissioners report, the Royal Commission on the Health of Towns was appointed in 1843 to investigate the sanitary arrangements of 50 English towns. Its findings resulted in the Public Health Act in 1848.

The Commission’s minute book is in MH 7/1 and its report was printed for parliament (Parliamentary papers number 572; 1844 vol xvii and number 602; 1845 vol xviii)

8. General Board of Health 1848-1858

The Public Health Act 1848 established the General Board of Health for a period of five years. The Board was reconstituted in 1854 but abolished by the Public Health Act in 1858.

8.1 Local boards of health

The General Board could give permission for local boards of health to be set up. Where the average death rate exceeded 23 per 1000 the General Board could create local boards itself.

The National Archives has local board sanitary inspection reports for Keswick in PC 1/2665 and Conway in PC 1/2667 as well as a copy of a set of reports (with some additions) on microfiche in PRO 28/125.

8.2 General Board of Health records

Key records relating to the General Board of Health include

applications to form local boards and general correspondence in HLG 19 and MH 13

correspondence and papers on cholera, yellow fever and quarantine in MH 13/245-50